May 7, 2016

20 Movies I’m Looking Forward to in 2016

Yes, I realize that we’re more than a third of the way through the year and that this annual post might seem pointless by now, but there are probably only three movies released up to this point that would have made the cut, and one of those — the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar! — would already have hit theaters even by my usual March, post-Oscars timeframe. So I say this is fair game…and since this is my blog, what I say goes. Truth is, I’m not hugely excited about this year’s offerings, so it took a while for motivation to strike. But there are always movies to look forward to, so the inevitable surprises notwithstanding, here are 20 still to come this year that have my interest piqued.

Colin Trevorrow made his feature directorial debut with the indie dramedy Safety Not Guaranteed, before being snagged by the studio system — like so many indie directors before him — to make the massive budgeted Jurassic World. His success on that monster hit led to his selection as director of Star Wars Episode IX. The jury’s still out on whether he deserved that golden ticket or not, but we may get some more clarity on the issue when he delivers this scaled-down story about…I don’t know really. There’s not a lot of information out there yet about the movie, including whether it’s a comedy or a drama or something in between. It makes my list based on my curiosity about Trevorrow, and because it features two of the best child actors working today: Lieberher (St. Vincent, Midnight Special, Masters of Sex) and Tremblay (Room, this adorable Instagram feed).

Damien Chazelle’s breakthrough movie Whiplash was set in the world of music. For his follow-up, he’s doubling down by going full-on musical. At one time set to feature Emma Watson and Chazelle’s Whiplash star Miles Teller, the movie instead came together with Stone and Gosling, collaborating for the third time after Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad. They play Mia and Sebastian, an actress and jazz pianist, respectively, who fall in love while trying to pursue their dreams of artistic success. Chazelle has spoken of the film as being a heart-on-its-sleeve love letter to Los Angeles and all the regular people therein, struggling to make it big without losing themselves along the way. The songs are, I believe, originals, though I can’t seem to find confirmation of that anywhere. Regardless, original, modern-day musicals are a big creative swing, and there’s no way to know yet if Chazelle’s will emulate Woody Allen’s charming Everyone Says I Love You or James L. Brooks’ disastrous I’ll Do Anything. It’s a dicey proposition, but Whiplash definitely earns Chazelle the benefit of the doubt.

Not much to say about this one yet. My interest stems mainly from the pedigree. I know that it’s set during World War II, and that Pitt plays an intelligence officer who meets Cotillard’s French resistance fighter in North Africa circa 1942. They fall in love, and meet a wacky cartoon rabbit who has invented a time traveling car that whisks them through history, where they interact with presidents and other prominent figures, and influence decades worth of pop culture.

Probably not, but with so little to go on, I’m taking cues from Zemeckis’ resume to fill in the blanks. Kidding aside, a lush period romance set against a dramatic backdrop has its appeals, especially when the central couple are played by actors as watchable as Pitt and Cotillard. And I gotta say, it’s been great to have Zemeckis back in the world of live-action filmmaking. May we never again speak of The Polar Express.

It’s been 16 years since Warren Beatty made a movie, in front of or behind the camera, which makes this long-in-development project — supposedly due to arrive later this year — a tremendous curiosity. The story concerns an aspiring actress (Collins) who comes to Hollywood and signs a contract under Hughes, where she meets a businessman (Ehrenreich), who is also trying to make a name for himself working for the enigmatic mogul. The two fall in love, but their relationship is complicated by their strict religious upbringings — hers Baptist, his Methodist — and by Hughes’ rules about dating amongst his employees, as well his own direct meddling in their affairs.

Beatty, never known for doing anything quickly, has been trying to make a movie about Hughes for roughly 40 years, and his take has apparently evolved significantly over time from more of a direct biopic to the current incarnation in which Hughes is not the central figure. The tone has been described as “lighthearted romantic dramedy,” and beyond that, the project remains cloaked in mystery. The story sounds charming, and ripe for some classical screwball comedy, if that’s the direction it goes, but it doesn’t seem like anything to generate significant excitement on its own. However, Beatty is a true Hollywood legend, one of the last we still have, so his return to action after such a long hiatus can’t help but generate high hopes.

Slumdog Millionaire‘s Oscar-winning screenwriter adapts the celebrated 2012 novel by Ben Fountain, about a group of Iraq war soldiers on a victory tour, and their stop at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium on Thanksgiving Day, where the jarring experience of celebration clashes with soldier Billy Lynn’s memories of the operation that earned him and his company war hero status. That general story recalls Clint Eastwood’s 2006 Iwo Jima drama Flags of Our Fathers, but if the plot sounds familiar, the filmmaking technique promises something new. Lee is shooting the movie in 3D and at a whopping 120 frames per second (fps). Every movie you’ve ever seen has been shot at the universal standard of 24 fps. But filmmakers like James Cameron and Peter Jackson believe that higher frame rates offer a more immersive and eye-popping experience. Jackson shot the second and third Hobbit films at 48 fps, and while the results underwhelmed most viewers — they complained that it gave the movies the quality of cheap video — there is still a lot of belief in its potential. In the less fantastical, more realistic setting promised by Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the higher frame rate — combined with the 3D photography and 4K resolution (which produces a sharper image with more detail and deeper blacks) — could work more successfully. The idea is that when these pieces of technology — 3D, 4K and higher frame rates — are used together, they compliment each other and negate the problems that each one has on its own. In the end, it won’t matter to most of us, since very few theaters in the world are even equipped to handle projecting a 3D, 4K movie at 120 fps. So let’s hope the story and the film itself are good. At this point, I’ve learned to never underestimate Ang Lee.

A project that Scorsese has been trying to make for years, Silence is the story of two young Jesuit priests in the 17th century who travel to Japan to search for their missing mentor and spread a little Christianity while they’re at it. They arrive to find Christians are being persecuted, and that the man they seek may have turned away from the faith. Religion has been a consistent theme throughout Scorsese’s work, manifesting in both the gritty urban tales he’s most closely associated with (Mean Streets, Bringing Out the Dead, The Departed) and period dramas like this one that address the topic head-on (The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun). I can’t say this story sounds riveting on paper, but Scorsese remains a bold and vital master filmmaker well into his fifth decade working in the medium. Whatever he’s doing demands attention.

After four films, the Bourne formula has become familiar, but the James Bond series is no less formulaic, and that franchise continues to thrive in its sixth decade, so if the movies still deliver the goods, I’m game for more. After the thrilling third installment, The Bourne Ultimatum, Damon and director Greengrass walked away from the series, unable to settle on a satisfying story. Undeterred, Universal Studios moved forward with The Bourne Legacy, which cast Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton in a story about another agent in a highly secretive government program with ties to Bourne’s, and which depicted events that unfolded parallel to those of Ultimatum. And like its three predecessors, it was pretty great.

Jason Bourne was a character trying to put together the lost pieces of his adult life, and he finally did that in his last outing, so where does the character go from there? Greengrass developed the new story with Christopher Rouse, the film editor who won an Oscar for his work on Ultimatum, and the director’s interest in the post 9/11 political landscape has provided these movies a depth and intelligence to go with the relentlessly paced action. The government conspiracy angle in which this series is steeped is always rife for further exploration, and the role of Bourne has been a great fit for Damon from the beginning. Let’s hope they can keep their streak going.

There’s been little consistency to the quality of Tim Burton’s films over the past several years, unless we’re talking about the quality of the production design and overall look of his films, which is seldom unimpressive. Early word is that his latest is another triumph on that score. Whether it succeeds beyond that remains to be seen, but I’m always looking for Burton to recapture that combination of humor, heart and the macabre that permeates his early career. The potential is there with this adaptation of Ransom Riggs’ novel, a rapturously reviewed best-selling book that was notable for including interspersed black and white photos of creepy, old-timey kids. No wonder a visualist like Burton was drawn to the material. It should be interesting to see how he spins the tale from page to screen, and how this eclectic cast fits into the milieu.

The Academy Award nominated director of The Imitation Game heads to deep space with two of the most charismatic movie stars working today. Katniss and Star Lord play passengers aboard a massive freighter carrying thousands of people to a colony planet that will take 120 years to reach from Earth. A malfunction in their hibernation chambers wakes the duo up decades before they reach their destination. It’s a great set-up; what happens from there, I don’t know. Is it a creepy sci-fi thriller in which strange things are happening aboard the ship? Is it romantic drama about how these two people deal with their isolation over the course of a lifetime that will likely end before they arrive at the colony? Is it a slapstick comedy about a couple of goofballs who have to save the ship from an invading alien force? Until a trailer arrives, it’s anyone’s guess.

Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish filmmaker who brought a stylish aesthetic and Lynchian atmosphere to the 2011 Ryan Gosling crime drama Drive, comes back to L.A. for the story of an up-and-coming model whose youth and beauty are targeted by a group of envious women. The trailer teases a psychological thriller with arresting visuals and a throbbing pulse of danger, though I’m not sure I’m buying Elle Fanning in the central role. There’s not much to go on yet, so I’ll see what she and Refn have in store. It could be an exciting, against-the-grain piece of casting…or a total misfire. Either way, the movie sure looks pretty.

Derek Cianfrance only has a few narrative movies under his belt, but all of them are wrenching, contemporary stories of complicated romantic and/or familial relationships that face disintegration. So get ready for what’s sure to be one of the feel good movies of the year! An adaptation of the 2012 novel by M.L. Stedman, Fassbender plays a lighthouse keeper in Australia whose wife (newly crowned Oscar winner Vikander) has been unable to have children. When a rowboat washes ashore, carrying a dead man and a living baby, the wife insists that they keep the child…and hilarity ensues! Or a tragedy of Greek proportions. I’m definitely betting on one of those two.

One of the standouts from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Manchester By the Sea was picked up for distribution by Amazon Studios, which won a bidding war and will give it a theatrical release before it finds a home on the streaming service. Word out of the festival is that this could be a big player in next year’s awards season, buoyed by stirring work from past nominees Affleck and Williams, and Emmy winner Chandler. Set in the small Massachusetts coastal town that gives the movie its title, the story follows a man who takes on the responsibility of caring for his nephew after his brother’s death. I avoided reading the unfailingly stellar reviews, but gleaned that the movie is deeply affecting, powerful and leaves a lasting impression. It will be nice to see Lonergan — best known for his stage work — regain his cinematic footing after the the ill-fated, ambitious but maddening Anna Paquin-led Margaret. Man, was that movie a mess. But this is the guy who made You Can Count On Me, so..fingers crossed for something closer to that.

Nate Parker is an actor who has impressed me in under-the-radar dramas Arbitrage, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Beyond the Lights, but he has his sights set on bigger things. The actor has worked for years to pull together financing for a dream project about Nat Turner, the Virginia slave who led a violent rebellion against white slave owners in 1831. The film was was ecstatically received at Sundance, where it won the Dramatic category’s Audience Award and Grand Jury prize, and sold for a record-breaking figure to Fox Searchlight, the same studio that guided 12 Years a Slave to a Best Picture win in 2013. The Birth of a Nation hit the festival just as the #OscarsSoWhite controversy was exploding, and speculation was already rampant that come next year’s awards, Parker and his movie would be in the thick of the race, bringing some much needed color back to the proceedings.

In 2009, fashion designer Tom Ford moved into filmmaking with A Single Man, starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode and Nicolas Hoult. It was no surprise that his eye for great design translated to the screen, but he proved a natural director right out of the gate, demonstrating an ability to tell a story cinematically and draw strong work from actors. Ford has taken his time landing on a follow-up, which suggests that his interest is filmmaking is driven by producing material that truly speaks to him. That bodes well for Nocturnal Animals, based on a 1993 novel by Austin Wright, which offers a compelling premise: years after their divorce, a woman receives a manuscript from her ex-husband, accompanied by a letter requesting that she read the book and offer her feedback. What unfolds from there is both the story of the novel — a family vacation that takes a violent turn — and the story of the woman, now remarried, as she re-examines the relationship with her ex-husband and where her life has gone since. I tend to enjoy the story-within-a-story structure we’re in store for here, and I’m genuinely excited to see Ford’s sophomore effort, backed by this excellent cast.

In this grounded sci-fi story, Amy Adams plays a linguist who is recruited by the military to determine whether alien spaceships that have appeared across the planet have come in peace or hostility. The premise sounds intriguing, but the main attraction for me is French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. With his 2012 kidnapping drama Prisoners and last year’s drug war examination Sicario, Villeneuve has quickly established his expertise at building tension and exercising tight control over every moment of his movies. He continues to fly under the radar, but after these last few films — even the bizarre, uneven Jake Gyllenhaal mystery Enemy achieved an intoxicating, moody atmosphere — he’s due to be recognized for the immense talent that he is. Maybe this will be the movie to bring him into the light of wider recognition. And if not, well, there’s always the Blade Runner sequel he’s gearing up to shoot.

Shane Black began his career as one of Hollywood’s hottest screenwriters, who practically pioneered the action-comedy genre as we know it today, through films like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. He transitioned into directing a decade ago with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a boisterous crime/mystery/comedy that paired Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer to pitch perfect effect, and marked an auspicious beginning to the post-rehab phase of Downey’s career. The actor even got Black to direct Iron Man 3, which had its merits but was definitely unfamiliar territory. Based on the trailers for The Nice Guys, he appears to be back doing what he does best: blending violent action and fast-paced comedy in a crime-mystery that brings together two great actors who instantly demonstrate an easy, natural chemistry. Gosling looks so goddamn funny in this thing I can hardly wait to see it.

Ben Affleck’s foray into the DC Comics universe delayed his directorial follow-up to Argo, which was supposed to come out this year or even last year, only to be pushed to October 2017. But test screenings for the movie are said to have begun, and my reliable sources placed high atop the Hollywood food chain tell me that Affleck is hoping to get the movie out this year, likely in December. We’ll see if he makes it. The Prohibition era crime drama set in Boston and Florida is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who has been pretty well served by Hollywood to date. Mystic River, Shutter Island, The Drop, and Affleck’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone are all based on Lehane books, and all are pretty good, at least. Given Affleck’s skill behind the camera, there’s no reason to think both his and Lehane’s track records won’t continue here.

Set in the 1950’s, Michael Keaton will portray Ray Kroc, the salesman whose milkshake machine led him to a small, successful chain of hamburger restaurants started by brothers Mac and Dick McDonald. Impressed, and seeing potential for something much bigger than the brothers had in mind, Kroc went to work for them and grew the business into the billion-dollar, billion-served ubiquitous behemoth it is today. But the growth came with drama behind the scenes, as Kroc’s aggressive style and lofty ambitions clashed with the brothers’ more humble goals for their operation.

When the movie went into production, I heard it described as being in the vein of The Social Network and There Will Be Blood. Those are two stirling touchstones to aim for, but let’s be clear: director John Lee Hancock, who helmed The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks, doesn’t have it in him to make anything as idiosyncratic as There Will Be Blood, nor as blistering as The Social Network. But a script by Robert Siegel — who wrote The Wrestler — is a good start, and more than anything really, I’m just looking for another great role for Keaton. The beloved actor is flying high these days, having starred in the last two Oscar winners for Best Picture. Hopefully The Founder will put him back in the hunt himself, after he came up short for Birdman. Master awards strategist Harvey Weinstein is releasing the movie, so you can bet he’ll push hard for Keaton.

This return to the world of Harry Potter doesn’t really have anything to do with Harry Potter, as it takes place 70 years before the birth of The Boy Who Lived. The focus of this story — the first in a trilogy — is Newt Scamander, an expert in magical creatures (and author of a book on the subject that was among Harry and company’s Hogwarts texts), who runs into trouble during a visit to New York City when some of his specimans escape. Fantastic Beasts existed as a slender volume Rowling published during the Potter years, as if it were a copy of Harry’s textbook. Now, she expands the story, but whereas all the Potter books were adapted for film by other screenwriters, here Rowling makes the leap herself. This is her first foray into writing directly for the screen, and her direct involvement — the fact that this is all-new material generated by Rowling herself — elevates this to something for all us Potter geeks to be truly excited about. Like all great world builders of fiction — Tolkien, Lucas, Martin — Rowling knows every inch of her universe, having developed detailed backstories for every character, creature, event and location. To see her dip back into this beloved world and transpose it to the screen makes this movie much more than a cash grab for Warner Bros., who were no doubt desperate to remain in the Potter business after the series came to its logical conclusion in 2011. David Yates, who did a mostly admirable job with the last four Potter films, returns to the fold.

The first in what might be a never-ending series of spinoff films, Rogue One will depict the Rebel Alliance’s dangerous mission to steal the plans for the Empire’s Death Star. Described by director Edwards (the man behind 2014’s Godzilla) as a war movie, Rogue One — connected to the previous films but outside of its established parameters — will allow for a different tone and feel than we’ve seen in any previous Star Wars movie. That’s an intriguing opportunity, and we can only hope that after the success of The Force Awakens and its revival of this beloved series, this new offshoot will stand on its own while earning the right to call itself a Star Wars story. If the teaser trailer is any indication, we have nothing to worry about.